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Brian Ervine (born October 1951) is a Northern Irish playwright, songwriter, teacher and former Ulster Loyalism politician, based in Belfast. The Northern Irish playwright St John Ervine (1883–1971) was a distant relative. As a politician, he served as leader of the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) from 2010 to 2011, having succeeded Dawn Purvis. Ervine's brother is elected new PUP leader Ervine's wife, Linda Ervine, serves as the Irish Language Officer at Turas, an Irish-language programme notable for its location in east Belfast.
His play, Somme Day Mourning, tells the story of working class east Belfast men who gave their lives at the battle of The Somme in 1916. The play also features original music and lyrics written by Ervine.
In 2005, at a special ceili in the Great Hall of Stormont Parliament Building, hosted by Tommy Sands of Downtown Radio, David Ervine sang "Leaving Dalriada", an emotive ballad written by Brian Ervine, about an exile ordered to leave the country by a gunman. Brian Ervine presented "Dalriada", a local radio programme focused on Ulster-Scots culture.
At his brother David's funeral, Ervine was pictured in the international media standing next to his brother's widow, Jeanette Ervine, while she was embraced by the president of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams. In his address to mourners at the funeral, Brian Ervine said his brother was able to "translate the bloodstained tragic prose of violence and hatred to the poetry of peaceful co-existence . . . He had the guts and the courage to climb out of the traditional trenches, meet the enemy in no-man's land and play ball with him."
In October 2010, Ervine was elected leader of the PUP. He unsuccessfully stood in Belfast East at the 2011 Northern Ireland Assembly election, where he was eliminated on the tenth count with 1,493 first-preference votes (4.62%).
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